Ian Schrager joins forces with chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten for new Edition Hotel

Two of the best-known names in their respective fields — hotelier Ian Schrager and chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten — have teamed up for the Edition Hotel in Miami Beach, they told The Miami Herald Friday.

The partnership had not previously been officially announced, but the two were set to host a cocktail party Friday night at the site of the old Seville Beach hotel, 2901 Collins Ave.

On Friday at the sales pavilion for the Residences at the Miami Beach Edition, the duo chatted nonstop as they examined an elaborate model of the hotel and grounds.

“We just have a good time together,” Vongerichten said. “He’s excited, I’m excited.”

Vongerichten pointed out a lower-level area on the model building that he described as a grab-and-go food court with a deli, bakery, hot kitchen and raw bar. Schrager referred to it as an “updated Wolfie’s,” referring to the deli eight blocks south on Collins Avenue that closed in 2002.

“It’s not just for the people at the hotel, it’s for everybody,” said Schrager, whose launch of the Delano in 1995 helped bring new life to South Beach.

Plans at the Edition also call for a beach eatery and upscale-but-modern restaurant that Vongerichten said would be “chic and glamorous” and focused on local ingredients. He referred to that restaurant as the Matador Room, a nod to the hotel’s previous life.

Vongerichten said Schrager approached him about the project nearly six months ago; they have worked together since he opened the Pump Room restaurant at Schrager’s Public Chicago in late 2011.

Vongerichten is also behind the lauded J&G Grill at the St. Regis Bal Harbour, which opened in January 2012, but the Edition will be his first foray into Miami Beach.

“You always have to wait for the right project,” Vongerichten said.

A partnership between Schrager and Marriott International, the Edition brand includes one hotel in Istanbul. A site in London is set to debut in August, followed by Miami Beach in early 2014, possibly late in the first quarter. Other locations in New York and Bangkok are scheduled to come online in 2015.

Already years in the making, the Miami Beach project has been closely watched since Marriott bought the property in July 2010. Now, construction at the massive site is well underway, with cranes towering over the gutted existing buildings and a new tower. The finished product will include a hotel with about 250 rooms as well as 26 residences, nearly half of which are already sold. The property also features an ice skating rink, a bowling alley and historic outdoor details including a sundial and diving board.

“It’s a little bit like a bamboo shoot that sits there for 100 years, then all of a sudden it shoots up 50 feet in weeks,” Schrager said. “It’s coming to life.”

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‘Dangerous dog’ ordinance passed in Pembroke Pines

An ordinance in Pembroke Pines aimed at constraining the behavior of dogs who brutally assault other dogs and humans passed unanimously late Wednesday, in response to two dog attacks that occurred in the city last December.

The nuanced regulations would require a dog owner to pay a fine and up to $750 in “dangerous dog” registration fees if a dog was determined to be “dangerous” by an independent veterinarian. The new ordinance also requires the dog to wear a muzzle and restricts running at large in public spaces.

Owners of a “dangerous dog’’ are also required to submit a copy of an insurance policy in the amount of no less than $300,000.

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Developers want to raise proposed Brooklyn Bridge Park complex three feet to avoid massive flood damage

These guys want to put their Brooklyn Bridge Park plans on a pedestal.

The developers tapped to bring a hotel and residential complex to Pier 1 near Old Fulton St are planning for a future Hurricane Sandy by raising both buildings up at least three feet to avoid the massive flood damage that devastated the surrounding DUMBO neighborhood during last October’s super-storm.

David Von Spreckelsen, a senior vice president at developer Toll Brothers, said the 159-apartment, 200-room hotel project — which would raise a $3.3 million chunk of the park’s $16 million annual maintenance budget — will now include additional steps and ramps leading to the main lobby and more masonry to ensure the building is above the site’s flood plain set by the feds.

Mechanical systems that normally are in basements will be moved to the roof. A basement will still be built but will be primarily used for parking.

“We want to make our building a structure that can survive any kind of storm,” said Von Spreckelsen, whose company is partnering with Starwood Capital Group in the development.

The development was supposed to break ground in February but is on hold until both Toll Brothers and Starwood complete the redesign.

Regina Myer, president of the city development corp. overseeing the 85-acre park’s construction, said she’s “comfortable” with the developers’ progress and confident that – despite the wrath of Sandy - the park would eventually be able to select a developer and move forward with other high-rise condo complexes planned for Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights and John Street in DUMBO.

Myer said the park suffered about $1 million in damage from Sandy – mostly lighting and other electrical work – that is nearly fixed, adding “the park did very well” considering parks citywide suffered a total of $750 million in damage.

However Cobble Hill Judi Francis said the storm proved just how bad a spot the waterfront park is to build more housing.

“The lesson of Sandy is it will happen again, and when it happens, it will be really bad for those residents who wind up buying condos there,” she said.

rcalder@nypost.com

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National Hotel nears end of long renovation

A panel of frosted glass puts everything in perspective for Delphine Dray as she oversees a years-long, multi-million dollar renovation project at the National Hotel on Miami Beach.

“Chez Claude and Simone,” says the piece of glass stationed between the lobby and restaurant, a reference to Dray’s parents, who bought the hotel in 2007.

“Every time I am exhausted and I pass that glass, I remember why,” said Delphine Dray, who joined her father — a billionaire hotel developer and well-known art collector in France — to restore the hotel after the purchase.

After working with him for years, she is finishing the project alone. Claude Dray, 76, was killed in his Paris home in October of 2011, a shooting that remains under investigation.

In a recent interview and tour of the hotel’s renovations, which are nearly finished, Dray did not discuss her father’s death, which drew extensive media coverage in Europe. But she spoke about the evolution of the father-daughter working relationship, the family’s Art Deco obsession and the inspiration for the hotel’s new old-fashioned touches.

The National is hosting a cocktail party Friday night to give attendees a peek at the progress.

Dray grew up in a home surrounded by Art Deco detail; her parents constantly brought home finds from the flea market. By 2006, they had amassed a fortune in art and furniture, which they sold for $75 million at a Paris auction in 2006.

That sale funded the purchase of the National Hotel at 1677 Collins Ave., which the Drays discovered during a visit to Miami Beach.

After having lunch at the Delano next door, Dray said, “My dad came inside the hotel and fell in love.” The owner was not interested in selling, but Claude Dray persisted, closing the deal in early 2007. Her family also owns the Hôtel de Paris in Saint-Tropez, which reopened Thursday after a complete overhaul overseen by Dray’s mother and older sister.

Delphine Dray said she thought it would be exciting to work on the 1939 hotel with her father, so she moved with her family to South Florida. She quickly discovered challenges, including stringent historic preservation rules and frequent disagreements with her father.

“We did not have at all the same vision,” she said.

For example, she said: “I was preparing mojitos for the Winter Music Conference.” Her father, on the other hand, famously once unplugged a speaker during a party at the hotel because the loud music was disturbing his work.

“We were fighting because that is the way it is supposed to be,” she said. “Now, I understand that he was totally right.”

She described a vision, now her own, of a classic, cozy property that brings guests back to the 1940s.

Joined by her 10-year-old twin girls, Pearl and Swan, and 13-year-old son Chad, Dray pointed out a new telephone meant to look antique mounted on the wall near the elevators on a guest floor. She showed off the entertainment units she designed to resemble furniture that her parents collected. And she highlighted Art Deco flourishes around doorknobs and handles.

“It’s very important for us to have the details,” she said.

With those priorities in mind, she is overseeing the final phase of the renovation, an investment that general manager Jacques Roy said will top $10 million. In addition to the small details, the renovation includes heavier, less obvious work: new drywall in guest rooms, for example, and new windows to replace leaky ones.

Painting of the building’s exterior should be finished in the next two to three weeks, Roy said. Dray compared its earlier unfinished state to resembling “a horror movie — the family Addams.”

And the final couple of guest room floors, as well as the restoration of the original Martini Room, should be done by the end of April.

“At the end, I will be very proud,” Dray said.

The National’s renovation wraps up as nearby properties such as the SLS Hotel South Beach and Gale South Beach & Regent Hotel have been given new life. Jeff Lehman, general manager of The Betsy Hotel and chair of the Miami Beach Visitor and Convention Authority, said the National has always been true to its roots. He managed the hotel for 10 years, including for a few months after Dray bought the property.

“I think historic preservation and the restoration of the hotels as they were built 70, 80 years ago is such a huge piece of our DNA,” he said. “It’s a lot of what sets us apart from any other destination on the planet.”

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Miami imam testifies that he lied when he professed support for the Taliban

In testimony that was at turns deadly serious and comical, a Miami imam accused of aiding terrorists testified Wednesday that he lied about his ostensible support for the Pakistani Taliban because he wanted to obtain $1 million from a purported Taliban sympathizer — who was actually an FBI informant.

Hafiz Khan, 77, the one-time leader of a Miami mosque, said he repeatedly deceived the informant, known as Mahmood Siddiqui, because Siddiqui had promised him the money to help poor victims of war between the Taliban and Pakistan army in the Swat Valley near the Afghanistan border.

Khan, accused of sending money to the U.S.-designated terrorist organization, was unaware that his conversations — in which he wished Americans would die in pursuit of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden — were recorded by the FBI.

“What I said was all lies,” Khan testified in Pashto through an interpreter. “It was just because of the money.”

Khan, on trial in federal court since early January, spent a second day on the witness stand in his own defense on charges of supplying at least $50,000 from 2008-2010 to the Taliban, sworn enemies of the U.S. and Pakistan governments. Khan, charged with four counts of providing material support to a terrorist organization, has maintained that the money he sent from Miami to Pakistan was for his family members, the poor and a religious school, or madrassa, in the Swat Valley — not to arm the Taliban.

“They are totally our enemies,” Khan testified about the Taliban, despite his ardent statements of support in the FBI-recorded phone conversations.

Khan, a naturalized U.S. citizen who came to this country in 1994, sparred during cross-examination with Assistant U.S. Attorney John Shipley, who grew frustrated as the frail yet feisty imam dodged his questions about his true beliefs about terrorism.

At one point, Khan said: “I kindly suggest to you that you go to a hospital. You have a mental problem.” He added that the cross-examination was a waste of time.

“I’ll let the jury make that determination, Mr. Khan,” the prosecutor said.

The 12 jurors tried to stifle their laughter, at which point U.S. District Judge Robert Scola excused them to take a break.

Scola then advised the defendant to bring his testimony down a notch. “You are never going to convince Mr. Shipley to change his mind about you,” the judge told him. “The only chance you have is to convince the jury to believe you.”

Shipley peppered the defendant with questions about his recorded conversations with the FBI informant, in which he praised the attempted 2010 bombing in New York’s Times Square.

“There are many times I am agreeing with him, but that does not mean that I mean it,” Khan testified.

Shipley, however, pointed out that Khan made similar comments in other telephone conversations with friends and relatives that also were intercepted by the FBI. The prosecutor repeatedly tried to compel the defendant to admit that he believes it is justifiable to kill Pakistani police and government officials because they have supposedly committed killings and atrocities themselves.

“What you are suggesting is exactly what the Taliban and al-Qaida have suggested for years. And we heard it in this courtroom,” Shipley said.

Khan admitted he made those statements in the recorded conversations, including saying to the FBI informant: “May God give the government to the Taliban.” Khan said he was expressing moral outrage over the Pakistan Army’s killing of women and children in the Swat Valley during its war with the Taliban.

At the same time, he seemed to suggest he endorsed an eye-for-an-eye philosophy.

“I did say this, yes. Now I will explain,” he told Shipley. “They killed people by cannon. They were innocent people killed in their homes. ... The entire public said they committed atrocities.”

Khan frequently attacked Shipley’s questions, calling them repetitive and refusing to answer them. The witness also gave rambling speeches that evaded the prosecutor’s questions, especially toward the end of the day when he spoke nonstop for almost 15 minutes.

Khan’s sons, Irfan and Izhar, were also charged along with him and others in the terrorism indictment returned in 2011. But prosecutors dropped the charges against Irfan without explanation last year, and the judge dismissed the indictment against Izhar, a Broward imam, for lack of evidence during the trial.

Hafiz Khan is likely the final defense witness in the trial, which could wrap up this week. His defense team had planned to call other witnesses to testify via video link from Pakistan, but last week the Internet connection was cut off during testimony of the second witness, a suspected Taliban fighter.

Why the link went dead at an Islamabad hotel where the testimony was being taken remains a mystery.

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Renny Harlin Talks Cliffhanger and Sylvester Stallone

Cliffhanger and Die Hard 2 director Renny Harlin's first-ever U.S. film, the supernaturally charged Prison, is out this week for the first time on a special-edition Blu-ray, and while talking about the project and his career he revealed to ETonline that before he shot a frame of film on Cliffhanger, Sylvester Stallone told him, "I have a fear of heights."

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"When he first arrived in the Italian Alps and came to look at the location for the first time, he looked up at this 11,000-foot peak that was in front of us, and I said, 'That's where our set is.' And he's like, 'So who's going to go up there?' I said, 'You are.' He looks at me and he says, 'You gotta be kidding. I have a fear of heights. The highest I will ever go is the heels of my cowboy boots,'" says Harlin with a laugh. "And it became my task to trick him into wanting to be higher in the mountains, because he thought he would be done with trickery and stunt people."

The 53-year-old Finnish filmmaker continues, "I knew his psychology and I put him in a situation where it would have been embarrassing for him to, in front of the crew, refuse to get there. Obviously, I was able to get him there, and then once I got him to relax he was more than willing to do everything, and even more that I wanted him to do. The highest peak that we worked was 13,000 feet high, and there he was right on the edge, basically doing whatever it took."

So, how did Harlin coax Stallone into a helicopter in the first place to get airlifted to such lofty locations? "He was okay with a helicopter as long as the door was closed," quips Harlin.

The director of such late '80s and early '90s action staples as The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea, Cutthroat Island and Driven got his first big break directing 1988's Prison, the story of an inmate population tormented by a mysterious and deadly supernatural force. He says of the shoestring-budget shoot at Wyoming State Penitentiary, "It was very crucial for me, because I had made one film in Finland before that, and this was now, finally after couple of years of really serious struggling in Hollywood, my chance to prove that I could actually make an American film."

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Harlin candidly adds, "It was a very scary experience, but I learned every day and I just tried to keep the ship on course and do my best every day. But I was petrified every morning I went to work. I was absolutely petrified. In the end, for the little money we had and the big things we wanted to do, we accomplished quite a bit and I was proud of the film. Did I ever imagine in my wildest dreams that it would have some kind of an impact, now that people claim that it has a little bit of a cult following and now that it's coming out as a special edition? I would have never imagined it."

Prison never saw a proper theatrical release due to the production company's bankruptcy issues, which Harlin considered "a huge blow to me," but he says "it taught me a hell of a lot about filmmaking in America" and it gave him a chance "to create another calling card … and ultimately was the reason that I was hired to direct A Nightmare on Elm Street 4."

After Harlin hit Nightmare out of the park and landed Die Hard 2: Die Harder, he quickly vaulted to A-list director status. But in Hollywood you're only as good as your last picture, and when the big-budget pirate epic Cutthroat Island (starring Harlin's former wife, Geena Davis) bombed at the box office in 1995, Harlin was knocked off his pedestal.

"Of course, that was a huge disappointment," he admits. "But I still had a chance to make some interesting movies after that, and visually they just give you another chance to prove yourself. … In Hollywood, you sort of have to be able to bend and reinvent yourself and seek different paths sometimes to kind of rebound and get back to the top of your game, and I went through such hard times and challenges originally when I broke into the business that anything after that is kind of easy to deal with."

The busy director explains that perseverance has allowed him to stay in the game: "You have to find and develop your process and find ways to get back in movies, and I’ve been lucky in that sense that I have had a chance to keep making movies, and I've done some interesting TV, and I'm developing my own series -- and now I have my brand-new deal to do Hercules."

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For more details on Harlin's plans for his epic version of the classic hero, CLICK HERE.

Prison is available now from Shout! Factory.

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School janitor gets 20 years for raping 12yo student

A Brooklyn school janitor convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in his middle school was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison today as his family sobbed in the back of the courtroom.

Ambiorix Rodriguez, 34, had sex with the girl in the basement and stairwell of the East Flatbush school but was busted when she told school officials.

Rodriguez did not force the girl to have sex but was charged with rape and other crimes because of her young age.

Prosecutors asked for a sentence of 74 years to life and read a statement from the victim’s aunt.

“She was and is still a child. How could you do this to her? How could you possibly think this is okay?” the aunt said.

Judge Sheryl Parker slammed Rodriguez before sentencing him.

“In this case the defendant repeatedly took advantage of a young girl in a place, her school, that should have been her safe haven.”

Parker also issued an order of protection forbidding Rodriguez to contact his victim for 75 years. Rodriguez, in grey prison sweats and hand cuffs, blew a kiss to his teary family when he walked into court, but did not turn to look at them when he was lead out.

jsaul@nypost.com

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Barbie Dreamhouse coming to Sawgrass Mills

Barbie fans will get to step into a real-life Malibu Mansion starting next month at Sawgrass Mills.

The Sunrise mall will be the only place in the United States to feature the first life-sized replica of the Barbie Dreamhouse. Located in the Oasis section at Sawgrass, the Dreamhouse will feature pink elevators, an endless closet, a walk-in “glitterizer” and a dazzling “diamond” ring display. Girls will be able to enjoy this unique interactive experience, including LED touch screens where they can digitally try on Barbie’s fashions.

The only other Barbie Dreamhouse Experience will be located in Berlin, Germany.

“It is a real coup for Sawgrass Mills to get this first-ever global experience, which will only enhance our already successful mix of retail, dining and entertainment concepts,” said Luanne Lenberg, vice president and general manager of Sawgrass.

The original Barbie Dreamhouse debuted in 1962 and has been a popular place for girls to play house with their Barbie dolls

Admission to the Dreamhouse at Sawgrass will start at $14.95, with special packages available for groups, families of five and a VIP Megastar Experience. The Dreamhouse will run through the end of 2013. For more information and pricing, visit www.barbiedreamhouse.com.

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Shooting incident underway in west Miami-Dade; public warned to stay out of area

Miami-Dade police are working an incident in west Miami-Dade of a report of shots being fired by a suspect, who may have set his home on fire.

Details were sketchy at 8 p.m., but police said there is a person shooting in the area along Southwest 154th Avenue and 57th Street, near Miller Road.

There were also reports of a hopuse fire at 15415 SW 57th St.

There are no reports of anyone injured at this time.

Police are advising the public to stay away.

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Heidi Klum Re-Creates Anne Bancroft The Graduate Carl's Jr Commercial

Heidi Klum reenacts Anne Bancroft's famous Mrs. Robinson character from The Graduate in a new Carl's Jr. commercial, and she did a good job of staying in character through her interview with ET's Rob Marciano.

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For the TV ad, Heidi's advances are directed towards a hamburger, but Rob also got an opportunity to step in for Dustin Hoffman once the cameras stopped rolling.

"Have you ever been seduced by an older woman?" Heidi asked the ET co-host.

"Not successfully, but if she'd looked like you that may have changed," Rob answered.

Heidi joins a long list of sexy celebs to sell burgers for Carl's Jr composed of Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Kate Upton and model Nina Agdal.

Watch the video for more.

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